As there must always be a laughable side, even to the grimmest events, the comic element was supplied in this case by our professors of languages, drawing, and so forth, who had not dared to go back into Paris after leaving it on the 28th, on account of the fighting. When they had made up their minds to return on the 29th, we persuaded those of them who wore moustaches that they would run very great risks, and even be taken for soldiers in disguise. Whereupon the schoolroom was at once turned into a barber's shop, where a general shaving was performed, with the inevitable change of appearance resulting there-from, which increased the alarm of the individuals operated upon tenfold.
While our professors were shaving off their moustaches, our father was disappearing from Neuilly. His movements were rigorously concealed from us, and I never learnt what they really were even in later days. So I will not attempt to speak of them. We were soon aware of the bare fact that he was in Paris, exercising public functions which were somewhat ill-defined as yet; and on the evening of the 31st my mother informed us that we were going to join him at the Palais-Royal. [Footnote: It is not for me to pass judgment on my father's conduct in accepting the crown in 1830. There is no doubt the July Revolution was a great misfortune. It gave a fresh blow to the monarchical principle, and it unfortunately encouraged those who speculate in insurrection. But I know as a fact that my father never desired it, and indeed watched its approach with the deepest sorrow. When the throne of Charles X. collapsed without his being able to defend it in any way, he certainly felt the most passionate desire to escape the common exile and to continue living a life which was to him the happiest of lives in France. The struggle one over, and the country in revolt from end to end, he realized that the only way in which he could escape exile was to associate himself with the movement, and at the outset he certainly did it solely in the hope of bringing back Henri V. to the throne. When this hope failed him, he yielded to the entreaties of those persons who implored him as the only person in a position to do it, to check France on that fateful descent which must bring her from the Republic to a Dictatorship, and so on to invasion, and to mutilation. He delayed that disastrous succession of events for eighteen years, at the risk of his own life, which was incessantly threatened, and history will do him honour for it in spite of the injustice of human nature.]
We started about eight o'clock at night, my mother, my aunt Adelaide, and we children, in an omnibus, so as not to attract notice. We began to come to barricades at the Barriere de l'Etoile, but openings had been made in them already, large enough for carriages to pass through, all which openings were watched by guards of armed people—I beg their pardons, I was mistaken—armed CITIZENS, playing at soldiers and police, who stopped and cross-questioned everybody in the most childish fashion. The omnibus could not get beyond the Place Louis XV., so many obstacles did we find in the way. We got out, and my mother divided us into twos, and told us to scatter and meet again at the Palais-Royal.
Paris was a curious sight that night, lighted up everywhere with lamps, and tricolour flags at every window. How people found time to make up so many emblems in those two days is a mystery! The streets were all torn up, and the paving-stones piled into the barricades, mixed up with overturned carriages, casks, and rubbish of all kinds. Behind these barriers were extemporized guardians, passers-by, people walking about with guns and firing them off every minute, and everybody, man, woman, and child, wore huge tricolour cockades in hats and caps or bonnets, or in their hair.
In the centre of a great crowd on the Place du Palais-Royal there was one of the Laffitte et Caillard diligences, which had been used as a barricade, and set up again. It was full of people inside, and they clustered on the roof like bees, all of them singing in chorus. Between the choruses, sharp volleys of musketry rang out, and the vehicle, drawn by three or four hundred people holding on to ropes, tore round the square, amid a concert of varied yells. Though it was very late when we reached the palace, it was all lighted up, and every door stood open. Anybody who chose could go in, and when we went up the stairs we found many people already settled on the steps, prepared to spend the night there. We saw my father in his study, and then we were sent to bed, or rather to camp out in the rooms we usually slept in. The next day the firing slackened, but the general idleness continued; everybody was walking about. Soon the question of food began to press, for all supplies and trade were stopped by the universal barricades. Everybody asked everybody else what was going on, a subject upon which every one except the leaders was profoundly ignorant. The multitude was just like an immense flock of sheep, whose shepherds had been driven away, and who seemed to wonder why the new dogs who were to herd them did not make their appearance. There was no bad feeling; now and then there would be a panic, everybody taking to their heels, nobody knew why, and then stopping again and bursting out laughing. Sometimes a noise arose, and swelled as it drew nearer. It was some popular leader going to the Hotel de Ville or the Palais-Royal, with two or three claqueurs before him, to stir up an enthusiasm in which everybody shared, without having a notion of the name of the hero they were acclaiming, yet glad to be able thus to show off their civic rights. Then there would be a fit of general tenderness. Everybody kissed everybody else vehemently. In some cases a transport of patriotism thus calmed itself; in others perhaps it was the effect of the extreme heat, and the consequent thirst, which had not gone unquenched, and in others, again, it was merely the relaxation of morals an era of universal brotherhood brought with it. The hero of this general and infectious kissing match was Lafayette. Everybody wanted to kiss him. A great rattle of drums having announced his arrival at the Palais-Royal one day, he had to take his stand in one of the drawing-rooms, in front of me, and be kissed by thousands of persons of all ages. I did it, like all the others, but I saw people I knew come up again many times over to be kissed by the illustrious veteran, and each time their agitation seemed to increase.
Every one went in and out of the Palais-Royal as they chose. It was a strange march past, of people of all sorts, who came to take notes, see how the wind blew, and give in an adhesion which might be more or less disinterested. Some of them, inspired by real devotion, came to try if they might even yet serve a cause that was so dear to them. Thus I saw M. de Chateaubriand led into my mother's drawing-room by Anatole de Montesquiou. And, on the other hand, I saw Savary, Duc de Rovigo, notorious in connection with the Duc d'Enghien, in full uniform, booted and spurred, leave the study, whither he had gone to offer my father his services.
One evening, as we were all gathered together, we heard a great noise coming from the staircase. We hurried towards it. A crowd of armed men, with lighted torches, were coming up, shouting loudly and waving flags. At their head came five or six pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique, with their three-cornered hats cocked and swords drawn. Behind them a woman in man's attire, red belt and close-fitting pantaloons, was being borne in triumph. She was a heroine of the barricades, whom the yelling crowd desired to introduce to my father, and he had to receive her. This scene filled me with disgust, and it was soon followed by another, no less painful. The leaders of the Revolution had sent an army of volunteers to dislodge the old King and his Guard from Rambouillet. They did not turn him out, first of all because the King himself had decided to disband his guard and retire to Cherbourg with no escort but four companies of his bodyguard; and, secondly, because these same volunteers, numerous as they were on leaving Paris, melted away rapidly on the road, and above all things took good care not to venture within range of the Guard's fire. Nevertheless, they returned in triumph from Rambouillet, bringing back the royal horses and carriages, which they had seized without striking a blow. I was horrified to see the great carriages, with six or eight horses, still driven by the wretched coachmen and postilions, in their state liveries, enter the Place du Palais-Royal—believing as I did that they were bringing back the King and his family as prisoners, into the very jaws of the Revolution. But, happily, this was not the case. The only people in the carriages were some young blackguards, dressed up in extraordinary garments, dressing-gowns and cotton caps, and I know not what other masquerading trash, intended to call forth the ribald jokes of the multitude. It was a disgusting scene. The days passed on, and by degrees Paris returned to its ordinary life. The streets were repaired, vehicles began to circulate again. Soldiers, gendarmes, policemen, were to be seen once more, and a certain sense of security revived. At all events the eternal struggle of order against disorder began afresh. Those who formed the most turbulent element of the Revolutionary party were induced, by degrees, to engage in the army, and were drafted off to Algiers, under the title of "Regiments de la Charte." It was less easy to get rid of a Guard of Honour, numbering some two or three hundred men, which had formed itself on its own responsibility, nominally for the protection of my father and of the Palais-Royal. This guard was always in the vestibule and on the staircase, night and day alike. It was an omnium gatherum of vagabonds, prowling ruffians of the vilest kind, ragged scamps, all carrying arms, stolen from every sort of place, among others from the Musee d'Artillerie, whence some had gone so far as to borrow cuirasses and helmets that had belonged to the warriors of the League. Of course they all had to be fed and paid. The chief of the band was a midshipman in the navy, on leave in Paris at the time the Revolution broke out, of the name of Damiguet de Vernon, who died afterwards with the rank of general in the army. Whenever my father went out, to go to the Chamber of Deputies or elsewhere, this rabble turned out and saluted after a fashion of its own, with drums beating and trumpets blowing. It was a scene quite worthy of Callot's pencil. To get rid of this worthy set, the midshipman was at once given a lieutenant's commission in the mounted Municipal Guard, under pretext of a reward from the nation, and clothes were bestowed on his band, wherewith they hastened to decamp on the first sign of the introduction of anything like discipline into their ranks.
Our regular routine began again too. After over a week's holiday, I was put back to school, where we immediately made a revolution of our own, by insisting that the bell which rang for class and mealtimes should be replaced by a drum. If, as I went into school with my folding desk under my arm, I came across the column of big boys coming down from their class-rooms, I used to get many a cuff to the tune of "Take that, your young Majesty!" or the slang saying of the day, "Have you seen Leontine?"—this last from the name of Leontine Fay, a favourite actress with young people. But, apart from that, my life was as monotonous as ever it had been. The riots and attempts at insurrection which succeeded each other with something very like regularity seemed to diversify it but very little. Yet I did feel a certain excitement the first time I witnessed one of these attempts at sedition. Our evening was just over at the Palais-Royal, and I had gone up to my room, when loud shouts, and an ejaculation of "Oh, good gracious!" from my valet, made me run to the window. The Court of the Palais-Royal was closed, but all the galleries were filled with a surging, yelling crowd, the more violent of whom were battering at the staircase door facing Chevet's shop. "They are going to break it in and come upstairs: they'll be here in another moment," we said to ourselves. "What is to be done?"
Amidst the general shouting, yells of "Death to Louis Philippe!" were to be heard. Then, all at once, in the gaslight, I saw the policemen's swords twinkle, pinking people in all directions. Soon the troops came hurrying up with fixed bayonets, and the rabble took to their heels at the sight of them. This crowd had just come back from Vincennes, whither it had gone to demand the heads of Charles X.'s ministers, who were shut up in the fortress, from General Daumesnil, "the man with the wooden leg," and having failed in that attempt it wanted to have my father's instead.
So that affair ended; but fresh opportunities for creating disturbances soon occurred, and were as eagerly seized upon. One was during a great diplomatic dinner given by my father in the dining-room of the Palais-Royal, which looks out on the Cour des Fontaines. I was sitting by Lord Granville's daughter, and doing my best to make myself pleasant, when the uproar of the riot burst upon us suddenly and interrupted all the talk. Everybody looked at everybody else, and then down at their own plate, and everybody looked very sorry to be where he was at that moment. Then the noise of a great trampling of hoofs on the pavement revealed the fact that the cavalry was charging, whereupon the sky cleared, and conversation began again, though not without some appearance of effort.